As the above-mentioned artificial supporting member having a porous body, there has been proposed a supporting member made of metal or ceramic.
As an artificial supporting member made of metal, there has been proposed, for example, an artificial operating member made of metal which is obtained by sintering and fixing beads made of metal on the surface thereof, obtained by forming a porous body on the surface thereof by casting, or obtained by laminating several mesh sheets.
On the other hand, as one made of ceramic, there has been proposed a method in which organic materials such as organic resin powders and organic fibers are dispersed in the ceramic raw material at the time of preparation of the raw materials, and three-dimensional net-like organic materials are blended into the inside of the mold by firing, and after forming, the organic portion is oxidized and eliminated by dry firing to obtain the porous material.
However, in the conventional art, there have been problems such as those described below.
Namely, none of the conventional art can accurately control the shape of the pores, other than the one which laminates several mesh sheets, therefore the pore shapes may be different for every product, or they cannot optimally lead the bone to reproduce and penetrate.
On the other hand, while the mesh sheet multilayer type can accurately control the pore shape so that it can optionally lead the bone to reproduce and penetrate, since it is composed of metal there is a problem in integration with the ceramic materials. Therefore, there have been problems such that the bone drops out from the ceramic substrates. Even if it does not drop out therefrom, the micro-movement due to the slackness between substrates has a negative influence on the living body, or it may affect the abrasiveness of the sliding face.